This weeks Saturday Poetry, matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘The Mothering Blackness’ by Maya Angelou. With a firm root in African American history, many of Angelou’s poems, such as this one, can be traced to the work songs slaves sang. The repeating lines give the sense of a refrain, and varying line lengths and numbers of syllables give an improvised feel. Songs passed down orally, such as work songs, are often narratives: this poem tells the story of a girl running back to “the mothering blackness.” The regularly indented lines also give the impression that at least two voices are speaking, which would have been the case in work…